


In a Tree

by florahart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Injuries, Clint can do tactics, M/M, cameos by other MCU characters, pre-existing relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 07:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11099997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: Clint has Phil's emergency tracker screaming at him, but no one is working on a rescue plan.  Obviously, Clint will have to just go get him himself.





	In a Tree

**Author's Note:**

> As with many of my fics, this started with a fairly low-merit, plot-free notion: of Barton and Couson, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, because evidently I am twelve.
> 
> (and then there is barely even kissing. Come on, brain, why.)

“What’ve we got?” Clint asked, surprising everyone in the room into looking up. 

“Sir?”

“Coulson’s emergency tracker went off?”

“His what?”

“Emergency tracker? Thing that goes beep beep somewhere when its owner turns it on, so that we can find him sometime today?”

“But...” They looked at each other, then all turned back to their terminals, typing hurriedly. “Oh!” Marzetti exclaimed, pressing his hand to the headset in one ear. “Oh _shit_.” He clicked through a series of mouse moves and tossed something to the big monitor. There was no image, but Coulson’s voice came through clearly. _Two additional structures sighted, going dark as soon as I send the files back to..._ A rush of static cam through and then, _May--_ and then nothing else. 

“ _That’s_ what you’ve got? On _Agent Coulson_?” Clint usually liked to reserve any looming or menacing for bad guys who needed killing, but Marzetti cringed and Clint didn’t feel that bad about it. “So, that’s a mayday, and you _did not know about it?_?”

“Uh, that was four hours ago, but then there’s something from May from _two_ hours ago in which... well shit. Okay, so I think we thought he was _sending files to May_ , but you’re right, his beacon went kind of nuts after that for a minute--” he tossed another file to the screen and they all watched a furiously tumbling red icon over a map grid that stuttered around for a full minute before it stabilized and then stilled. It just sat there, blinking, and then Marzetti said, “um, and it hasn’t moved since. ButIdon’thaveanemergencytrackersignal,” he added in a burst at the end.

Clint took a deep breath. Any day Phil was going in practically alone was a day that made Clint nervous, and the coded message he’d gotten yesterday morning had suggested this was such an event. Phil, a pilot borrowed from a base in the Amazon, and sure, it was supposed to be basic recon, but since when was any mission Phil was on basic?

He set aside the part about the crew having no emergency beacon ping – it didn’t matter, because he _did_ , and clearly their data backed it up. “So, you now _do_ realize it was a mayday, so _what have we got_?”

Marzetti winced and started typing again. Robinson came up with a mission outline first, and once she had that up, Demir had a satellite moving to cover the area in real time, and Andrews had a list of area commands they could contact.

Clint nodded and docked his phone at the end of the bench to share the signal he was still getting. This, he could work with.

\--

“So the long and short of it is,” Clint said, pointing the laser thing at the map on the screen because fancy touchscreen gewgaws were fun and all but this was business, “We think Coulson is literally stuck in a tree, in a fu-- in a forest basically surrounded by a lot more forest and oh yeah, a whole bunch of Montoya’s men. His beacon says he’s about 90 feet up, so best guess is a parachute hangup and then either a tool problem or some other reason he can’t move.” Clint shuddered a little at the idea that that could mean some kind of injury or even unconsciousness. 

“His biometrics keep cutting in and out, but when they’re in, he seems to be okay,” Robinson cut in, and it was true, which was what Clint was hanging onto, but still. 

“Ish,” he said. “He’s been there um, eight hours and about ten minutes so, clear weather, 72 degrees is what the weather map says so call it somewhere between 65 and 80? He’s probably running out of water, assuming that didn’t get lost in whatever the emergency was, but since he’s literally not moving at all, I’m guessing he’s either waiting it out or he’s super f...utzed because, I don’t know, two dislocated shoulders and hanging by them in a tree?.”

“It’s probably nothing that painful, though,” Robinson said. “Pulse seems okay?” Clint ignored that if Coulson was unconscious he might not be feeling pain necessarily or okay, his pulse would be fucked by the combination of injury and unconsciousness and probably adrenaline? Biometrics were useful until they weren’t, and sometimes their data was kind of shit. Plus, shut up, Phil Coulson was the kind of badass who _might_ have two dislocated shoulders and still be hanging there managing his pulse in case he needed to the energy later.

“What’s Montoya’s crew look like?” Fury’s face was still and somber, which was never a good thing.

“Nasty. Angry. Inclined to shoot people in the face.” Clint shook his head. “May’s closer, but she doesn’t think she can get to him without being spotted. There are at least nine camps we’ve found in a two-mile radius, and there could be more under the canopy. And, I mean, they’re camps, but they have eight to fifteen tents, various sizes, so there could be anywhere from fifteen or twenty to fifty or more guys at each site. They’re obviously processing some kind of product, probably drugs, so on the up side, they’re focused on work at hand. On the down side, they’re probably protective as fuck of their drugs, so.”

“And you’re telling me all this because you wanna go get him.”

“I think I can.”

“Where May can’t.”

“I’m a better shot than she is.”

“You’re not a better pilot.”

“I can fly him, sir,” Robinson said. “I’m also not better, but I’m good.”

Fury sighed. “Barton, I know you and I know if I nix this, say I can’t risk losing _two_ good agents to a freak clusterfuck, you’re just gonna quit and go anyway. So, fine. Robinson, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I looked at your scores. They’re good, but your hand-to-hand is shit. Can you keep him from getting crazy and just jumping out the damn plane if you get on site and the situation is worse than you think?”

Robinson looked at Clint, who scowled back, then straightened up. “I believe I can,” she said.

The way she said it, Clint kind of half believed her, too, although he also had a lot of tricks up his sleeve and besides, he had at least thirty pounds and three inches of reach on her, so maybe not. Still, he didn’t argue the point. “Sir, I don’t mean to go into a hopeless situation. Still, if it’s what it looks like, if his biometrics and beacon are right, I don’t know how he doesn’t either die there or have to come down in some highly risky way. And if he’s going to do the second one you know he’s not going to give us past tonight.

Fury pressed his lips together, clearly not a fan of the entire situation, then shrugged. “Damn it. Fine. You’re a go, but if you shoot the wrong tree don’t think I can just keep sending additional clowns to the circus, you get me?”

“I do.” Clint shrugged and headed for the door, waving Robinson ahead of him. “Clowns probably wouldn’t be much help anyway, sir. Most of ‘em are kind of bad at stealth.” He went out before Fury could throw anything at him, and then broke into a jog to catch up with Robinson. “How long you need?” he asked.

“Wheels up in ...make it about twenty-five, sir?” She squinted for a second, then said, “Maybe thirty, but probably as the sun sets is about right for getting us there anyway, right?”

Clint nodded and headed for the armory. Castenholz had promised a gear revision, and thirty was going to be cutting it a little close.

\--

 

“We’re about six minutes out, sir,” Robinson’s voice came in over the headset. Clint was in the back, eyes closed, going over the satellite images in his mind’s eye. He had print copies, but that wasn’t how he worked, really, and if people wanted to give him shit about meditating, well, whatever, wasn’t like people didn’t have plenty else to give him shit about. 

“Thanks,” he said. He unbuckled and stood, grasping the overhead bar and using it to lean and twist a little, get a good stretch in before strapping into his pack and helmet. He did, in fact, have an arrow nocked when he felt the jet slow to a near-hover, and he opened the door, took a look down for anyone who might, inexplicably, have eyes on him and need shooting, then considered the position and windspeed on his HUD and the stirring of the canopy below, uppermost leaves glinting golden in the low red sunlight. Cloaking was all well and good, but if anyone actually saw him jump, that would be bad, so he collapsed the bow and stowed the arrow, picked his moment, just a little bit early coming from the west, and stepped away from the plane door. He dropped fast, purposefully, and yanked the cord on the pack when he wasn’t much more than fifty feet above the treetops. The chute inflated hard and sudden, jerking him to a near stop (ow, that was probably going to actually bruise across his chest), and then the central section collapsed back into him, the edges fanning out into what he hoped was an effective (lighter, less sturdy, more disposable) version of the Falcon wings. 

At least, that was what R&D was promising, and if this was maybe somewhat earlier of a prototype trial than anyone had thought was a good idea, well, tough.

He picked his treetop and made for it with a yank and a spin (ow again, this was a whole new kind of workout even for a guy with a high wire in his past, and he was going to be sore all over in the morning), then dropped between two limbs, fired the jets for just a second to come left a fraction, and landed on a branch that bent precipitously under him, fifteen feet above the top of Coulson’s head and about a quarter of the way around the enormous tree.

Phil looked up slowly, squinting in the low light, but didn’t make a noise as Clint quietly ditched the pack and hung it on an adjacent branch and then clicked his comm unit twice, pause, twice again to indicate positive contact and positive demonstration of life.

And then, he started making his way across to figure out how and why Coulson was hung up and take a look around for any unlucky witnesses.

Once he was there, it wasn’t complicated to figure it out, so he leaned back and had a quick hand-signal and lip-read conference with Phil (no witnesses, a lot of damage, even more frustration), then went to untangling the mess. Phil could have done it himself, but surrounded with no backup and in an unlucky position—unable to see the problem because his chute itself was in the way, draped just out of reach and snagged just so there was no good way to move it without dropping it, tearing it (maybe loudly), or snapping more than the couple of branches he’d tumbled through on the way in, he’d elected to just sit tight.

In ten minutes Clint had the chute taken care of, and then it was only a matter of waiting for the feeling to return to normal in Phil’s left hand, which had been hanging awkwardly throughout, before they could start to move. His right was mostly disabled; relocating a popped-out shoulder alone while hanging in mid-air was beyond even Phil.

By midnight, they were sitting forty feet lower, Clint’s pack retrieved and hidden away, along with most of his gear higher up, and then themselves on a broad branch on the far side of the tree from the nearest camp. Clint put his own back against the trunk and turned off his mike, then straddled Phil’s hips, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him back against his chest, carefully offering extra support on the right because yeah, putting the ball back in the socket was a big help, but the muscle surrounding was still pretty strained, maybe torn and they were going to rest everything for at least a couple of hours until Clint heard back on the extraction target. “So,” he muttered, barely-voiced against Phil’s ear. “Basically today was one giant heart attack for me. You?”

“One large heart attack followed by several hours of extremely boring boredom,” Phil murmured back. “With a side of fucking ow my shoulder.” He leaned further back, head resting on Clint’s shoulder.

“Command didn’t get your e-tracker,” Clint said. “Just me.”

Phil started to shrug, then winced and stopped. “I have two. The other one took a pretty good hit in the fracas.”

“Fracas.” Clint nudged Phil’s cheek with his own. “Your fucking plane blew up in a way that led the bad guys to think you didn’t survive. That’s not a fracas. That’s an emergency.”

“That too.” Phil shook his head slightly. “It shouldn’t have been a hard enough hit for it to fail, just a bruise, so that’ll be something for the geeks to look at. Good thing I have a second one that just pings you.”

“ _Why_ do you have a second one that just pings me?”

Phil pointed to himself with the thumb of his good arm. “Level eight. There was a time it was possible that command would conveniently fail to notify you if something happened on an op above your clearance. I don’t think they would now, what with, you know, superhero--”

Clint snorted quietly. “I’m a fucking archer with an attitude.”

“And a superhero, an argument we are not having again now. Anyway, I made them put in a second when I had that close call in Rio a few years ago because you and abandonment are not a happy combination.”

Clint closed his eyes and squeezed Phil carefully. “I’m really glad you did. The kids in the comm center weren’t going to realize you were here for a while yet.”

“They—whatnow? I sent a mayday, and--”

“It cut off in a manner which they not entirely unreasonably didn’t understand to be what it was. I was maybe a little, let’s go with ‘terse’, with them, but I don’t think they’ll make that mistake again, but seriously you were probably going to be hanging there another 24 hours.”

“Well, no, I was going to cut my way loose soon. There’s only so long hanging motionless at a weird angle is fun.”

“I dunno, I sometimes hold a post for 20 hours or so...” Clint grinned, aware Phil probably couldn’t see him in the light of the half-moon still on the rise up over the treetops. “But seriously, cutting loose, injured, from that high... okay, I probably would too, but we all know I’m bad at making healthy choices. You don’t get to go dying in a forest on me.”

“Well now I won’t need to.” Phil nudged at Clint’s jaw. “How long you figure we got here?”

“Probably two, three hours. I’m pretty sure Fury had Rachel Cardones start plotting how to draw everyone to the north before I ever left, and I expect she’ll shoot for some kind of pre-dawn timeline. Why?”

“No reason. Just thinking about whether either of us has time to catch a nap.”

Clint shrugged. “Sleep if you want. I’m good for a while yet, and I’m the one with comms here.” Which was true; Phil’s earpiece was somewhere in the forest floor, probably being crawled on by assorted bugs, worms, and whatever small woodland rodents lived in Central Junglefuckajara. 

“Well, but if I sleep everything will probably stiffen up worse than it is now.” Phil nuzzled in against Clint’s neck. “Will you wake me often?”

“Babe, I can carry you out if you need me to. It’s okay to rest.”

“Sure, but it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier if I _don’t_ need you to. Wake me?”

Clint chuckled. “You just want to retain your nominal lead in the who-saved-whom sweepstakes.”

“Maybe a little bit. Wake me?”

“Fine.” Clint sighed. “You’re going to try to climb down the tree on your own just to prove you’re good, aren’t you?”

“That’s more what you would do,” Phil said. “But it’s not just about me. It’s also about minimizing the resources required so I’m not pulling a dozen other people into danger.”

“Fine, I’ll wake you,” Clint said. He gripped Phil a little more tightly and settled back to count the minutes in watchful silence.

When he reached twenty, he considered being not a man of his word because Phil was breathing evenly and basically all he wanted out of this mission was to take care of him, but argh, they’d made each other promises about faith and honesty so he pressed a kiss to Phil’s temple, then another to his eyebrow. “Hey, twenty.”

“You have no idea how much I want to say five more minutes,” Phil said, turning a little to return a quick kiss.

“We could just do this,” Clint said. “I mean--” His earpiece crackled. “Oh, well I guess either way rescue time is coming up.” He dropped another smooch. “Little earlier than I thought.”

 _Barton, we’ll be on site about 1800 meters south-southeast in... make it twenty-nine, stand by for exact coordinates._

Clint turned his mike back on. “Copy.” He hand-signaled to Phil at the same time, conferred briefly with the nav officer for the coordinates, and turned the mike back off. “One more for luck,” he said, planting a hard kiss on Phil’s mouth. “Now please you’re going to let me do the climbing down, right?”

“Legs’re fine,” Phil argued, but he did let Clint manhandle him around to climb onto his back, and they started for the ground before he dropped to his feet and carried himself.

It took them just under twenty-seven minutes to achieve their target because roots and ditches in the dark are a hassle, but just as they arrived they could hear diversions to the north and distantly to the west, so it seemed as though everything was according to plan. Still, the explosion overhead, out of which dropped the jet (fast, but under control) was a surprise, and when May’s voice came over the comm Clint forgot for a moment to turn his voice back on. “We’re ready when you are.” He paused, then remembered. “Well, shit.” He flicked the switch. “We’re here. Open sesame, May.”

The hatch dropped open, and they ran in, Clint smacking the big red button to raise the ramp and signal May to lift right back off. He plunked down next to Phil on the long bench along one side of the body of the jet and reached under the seat for the first aid kit. “So I mean, that was never really what I thought sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g was going to be like, Boss, but--”

“If you planned a rescue around getting to say that, I am withholding sex until tomorrow,” Phil warned.

Clint chuckled. “I see.” He found the folded-up sling and pulled it out of the package.

“Okay, or at least after supper.”

“Babe, you’re probably still going to be in medical until supper.”

“Well, then I won’t have any trouble holding to it, will I?”

Clint rolled his eyes. “We’ll see.”


End file.
